May must get tough with Lords to stop the Brexit meddling

Even the least fair-minded opponent of Brexit would concede that some of the 14 amendments made by the Lords to the EU withdrawal bill, which returns to the Commons tonight, probably exceed the upper house’s brief: to scrutinise and revise legislation.

Instead it has taken a technical bill concerned with making the statute book fit for purpose after Brexit and added off-piste clauses designed as surreptitiously as possible to trigger second referendums, keep us in the customs union and effectively take over the negotiation with the European Union. The unelected in support of the unaccountable, as Oscar Wilde might say.

In this, and in voting against the Commons on the Leveson Two proposal to investigate the press, the Lords has effectively torn up the Salisbury…

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